Introduction of digital communications has completely transformed criminal and civil proceedings, wherein the digital information has become an indispensable document of proof instead of being an additional one. It had been for almost two decades that the admissibility of such digital information had been governed in India under a statutory scheme contained in Section 65A and 65B of the Indian Evidence Act (IEA), 1872. Such a statutory scheme, which had very strict procedural pre-requisites, had evolved on the basis of a series of important judicial precedents, including the landmark cases of Anvar P.V. v. P.K. Basheer and Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal. This paper discusses the legal doctrine of the past statute in the light of the current statutory scheme contained in Sections 61 to 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), 2023. The BSA, while providing forward-thinking definitions of the technology like cloud computing, smartphones, Internet of Things, and semiconductor memories, has modified the traditional concept of primary and secondary evidence, where electronic documents are considered to be primary evidence.The key, and somewhat paradoxical, finding of this paper is that the BSA does not weaken procedural formality but rather shifts it. A careful analysis of section 63(4) reveals that the level of formality required for the process of authentication of evidence in the BSA is higher than in its predecessor: Section 63(4) provides for a two-stage signature by both the individual in control of the device and the technical expert, in contrast to one signature under Section 65B(4). 
 

Keywords: Electronic Evidence; Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023; Admissibility of Digital Evidence; Authentication of Electronic Records; Section 63 BSA